Bill attacks Kansas' math, reading standards

A Kansas House bill seeks to undo Kansas' mathematics and reading standards, which were developed under Common Core.

A new version of a bill to ban Kansas’ mathematics and reading standards surfaced this week in the Legislature.

House Bill 2621 would declare the state’s math and reading standards, adopted in 2010, “null and void,” sending the Kansas State Board of Education back to the drawing board.

It also would scrap the state’s science standards, adopted last summer.

Both sets of curriculum standards are part of multistate efforts that advocates say bring much-needed rigor and consistency to how those subjects are taught across the U.S. Foes of the standards argue that they overstandardize schools and that the federal government is pushing them behind the scenes to increase its control of state education matters.

Last year, the fight over the math and reading standards, called the Common Core, led to hours of hearings and testimony at the Kansas State Board of Education and in the Legislature. The state board, an elected body of 10 representatives, effectively urged lawmakers to back off, citing a clause in the state constitution that gives the board “general supervision of public schools.”

In the end, a watered-down version of the bill, which was spearheaded by conservative Republicans, narrowly failed to pass.

This year’s bill goes farther than last year’s. It bans the Kansas school system from collecting and delivering certain data about students to federal agencies and other institutions. That includes biometric data, such as students’ DNA sequences and their retina patterns.

It also blocks the Kansas State Department of Education and schools from administering tests to students to collect information about their personal attitudes and mindsets and from collecting longitudinal data about students that extends beyond high school.

Some critics of the Common Core, including attendees at an Americans for Prosperity meeting in Topeka in November, have suggested that government agencies plan to use schools to collect biometric and psychological information about children and to hook children up to machines that will give insight into their minds.

Other Common Core critics have focused on the federal government’s role in supporting Common Core, including, for example, by funding the development of math and reading tests related to the standards.

A number of Kansas education groups and school administrators, however, have thrown their support behind the standards, calling them pedagogically sound and rigorous.

In December, the state board decided not to use the federally funded tests in Kansas. Instead, Kansas schools will continue to use annual math and reading tests developed by The University of Kansas.